Tammy Flanders Hetrick has been telling stories all her life, refining her skills at age ten through marathon tag-team storytelling with her best friend, honing her craft through decades of business writing, and ultimately finding joy in extracurricular creative writing. She has published short stories in Your Teen Magazine, Blue Ocean Institute’s Sea Stories, and Route 7 Literary Journal. In 2009 she was recognized with the Outdoor Industries Women’s Coalition’s Pioneering Woman Award for coaching and mentoring women in the workplace. Hetrick lives in Vermont with her husband of thirty years, their two cats, and a beagle/miniature bull mix.

Before her death, Stella Rose asks her best friend, Abby, to take care of her sixteen-year-old daughter, and Abby does the only thing she can: she says yes.

After Stella’s death, Abby moves to Stella’s house in rural Vermont and struggles to connect with Olivia, who immediately begins to engage in disturbing behavior—starting with ditching her old group of friends for a crowd of dubious characters.

As the fog of grief lifts, Abby reconnects with old friends, enlists the aid of Olivia’s school guidance counselor, and partners with Betsy, another single mom, in an effort to keep tabs on the headstrong teenager she’s suddenly found herself responsible for—but despite her best efforts, she is unable to keep Olivia from self-destruction.

As Abby’s journey unfolds, she grapples with raising a grieving teenager, realizes she didn’t know Stella as well as she thought, falls in love—twice—and discovers just how far she will go to save the most precious thing in her life.